A festive Freetown surprise
on Freetown Blog (Sierra Leone), 19/Dec/2009 09:45, 34 days ago
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I was lying on my bed under the mosquito net in the dark, sometime after 10pm. It was a very warm night (so no surpise there) and I was glad of the slight breeze blowing in through the open windows. Suddenly a sound started up outside that was as surprising as it was familiar.Here in Freetown, I am quite used to late night West African music, but a brass band playing "See Amid the Winter Snow"? It turned out that it was the Freetown Police Band. I was brought up in a small village in Devonand every Christmas the village band would travel the parish playing carols at the outlying farms. The band often received refreshment at the places they visited. As the evening wore on, and more hospitality was received, the carol playing would increasingly become a triumph of enthusiasm over technique. As you can hear from the attached clip (which I recorded on my ipod recorder), I suspect the same tradition of hospitality operates here.
